Live Expansions: Future of the MMOG?
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With the upcoming release of The Call to Arms, a new free expansion for Warhammer Online, the question of whether companies should adopt the free expansion concept began to percolate in my brain. The initial knee-jerk reaction billowing out of every boardroom in America may be a resounding, "NO!", but I say that reaction should be ignored. The concept deserves a far closer look and what better venue to do this in than this week's Forever Fantasy column?
The idea of giving players a free expansion may be anathema to most, but there are some solid reasons why it's a good idea. First and foremost is the amount of content you can decide to include or not include. When you attach a price to an item, you immediately attach an imagined value, or worth. In doing so, you have guaranteed you will now piss off an unknown number of players (your customers), despite the best effort of every developer in the modern world to do otherwise. There will always be a set amount of people that will never feel they've gotten what they've paid for when it comes to an expansion (or anything else for that matter). There's not enough content, bug fixes, new territory, etc. There is not, and never will be, enough to satisfy this particular group. When you remove the cost from such an expansion though, gamers no longer have the ability to complain about any cost involved (though this rarely stops some).
